There is an increasing international consensus that the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) affords a platform for increasingly more countries to explore new international economic governance mechanisms and new development paths. In the meantime, neoliberal globalization has arrived at a crossroads, while anti-globalization voices are louder and practices more frequent since the 2008 global financial crisis, challenging the future of globalization at the scale of the world as a whole. Against this background, political elites and scholars increasingly see the BRI as a possible alternative and new globalization path and, in particular, as a path towards inclusive globalization. Based on a brief review of the process and mechanisms of global economic expansion, and a critique of neoliberal globalization, this article tries to use the vision and actions proposed by the BRI to develop the concept of inclusive globalization. The article suggests that inclusive globalization involves at least the following dimensions: a better and more powerful role of state as a mediator to ensure social justice and stability; correcting the duration mismatch in financial markets and provision of more patient capital to finance infrastructure development, productive activities, and real services in economically less-developed countries and regions; encouraging countries to choose and experiment with development paths that best fit their national conditions and values; enabling all stakeholders to participate equally in globalization; and protecting cultural diversity while promoting economic globalization. Although these dimensions are not sufficient to delineate in detail inclusive globalization, they at least point to several directions for future research on the topic and may offer some support for discursive construction of the BRI.
Since the initiative of the Belt and Road strategy, the Chinese government greatly encourages the operation of China Railway Express (CR express), aiming to transform China's traditional international trading transport system. The growth of CR express helps to strength the transport role of the New Eurasian Land Bridge and promotes change of China's transport system for international trading from single maritime transport to a combination of maritime and land transport. The largest barrier for developing CR express, however, is that the freight sources are dispersed and the transport organization is nonstandard. This has led to the disorderly competition for international container transport due to the very recent growth of transport volume, which is brought by subsidies of local governments. This study examined the development history and problems in the last five years since the operation of the first CR express, and pointed out that the Chinese government must understand that the CR express cannot compete with the maritime transport for freight going from China to the EU market. The CR express has its economic transport hinterlands from the border ports and it is necessary to establish a hub-and-spoke transport mode at the national level and build the transport hubs for profiting from the operation of CR express. A model was built to define the economical transport hinterlands of the three border ports in China-Alashankou, Erenhot, and Manzhouli. The result indicates that Northeast China is the hinterlands of Alashankou and Northwest China is the hinterlands of Manzhouli. Other hinterland areas are defined by the traffic rate abroad from Erenhot. Finally, the article identifies the transport hubs for CR express including Chongqing, Urumqi, Harbin, Zhengzhou, among others, and puts forward suggestions and police recommendations to the Chinese government.
Unimpeded trade is one of the priorities of cooperation in the Belt and Road Initiative proposed by China. On 15 May 2017, the Joint Communique of the Leaders Roundtable of the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation reaffirmed the participants' shared commitment to build an open economy and ensure free and inclusive trade. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is not only China's new action to drive its open and global development, but also a platform for increasingly more countries to explore free and inclusive trade. It is therefore important to examine the topological relationship between BRI trade network and global trade network, for promoting a universal, rule-based, open, nondiscriminatory, and equitable multilateral trading system. Based on a literature review, this article first analyzes community structure and trade network based on community detection algorithm, and then estimates the topological relationship of different trade communities. The findings of this article are as follows. First, we identified five trade communities in global trade network through community detection algorithm, in which China, USA, Russia, India-UAE, and Germany-the Netherlands-France-Britain and other European developed countries are the cores of the five trade communities, respectively. Second, we identified three trade communities and two sub-communities in the BRI trade network, in which China is the core, Russia is the sub-core of the biggest trade community, and India, UAE, and Saudi Arabia are cores of the second trade community (South Asia-West Asia). Third, the topological analysis results indicate that in the global trade network, most BRI countries are attracted by the core nodes in the BRI area, such as China, Russia, India-UAE core nodes, and have strong trade contact with BRI countries. Most Central-East European countries are mainly attracted by Germany-the Netherlands-France-Britain and other European developed countries with low penetration of BRI trade. Although some Southeast Asian countries are incorporated into the Asia-Australia-South Africa community with China as the core, they still need to strengthen trade linkages with BRI countries.
Urban road structure is one of the most important factors influencing commercial agglomeration. Research on the relationship between urban road structure and commercial agglomeration plays a supporting role for the layout of services and traffic planning. Based on theories of space syntax combined with GIS and bivariate correlation analysis, we explored the correlation between road structure and commercial agglomeration in the Wuhan metropolitan area. The space syntax model was used to compute road structure indicators. The kernel density estimation method was used to calculate the density of commercial points of interests (C-POI) in 2014 to analyze the spatial structure of commercial agglomeration. We used the Pearson correlation coefficient to analyze the correlation between road structure and commercial agglomeration. The results show that: (1) Global integration showed the highest correlation with the commercial agglomeration among the four spatial syntactic variables. Finance and insurance services had the highest correlation with road structure. (2) Connectivity value and global integration value were significantly and positively correlated with C-POI density, with a spatial correlation pattern of "high-high" agglomeration. Total depth value showed a significant and negative correlation with C-POI density, with a spatial correlation pattern of "high-low" agglomeration. C-POI density increased first and then decreased with increasing control values. (3) The spatial distribution of commercial agglomeration presented a "multicore-transitional area-periphery" multiple level structure. "High-high" agglomeration and "high-low" agglomeration were concentrated in the "core area" and the "transitional area" in the vicinity of the cores.
With the main focus of regional competition shifting from cities to urban agglomerations, it is important to analyze the spatial structure and direction of coordinated development in urban agglomerations. This is especially significant in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration, which is a core urban agglomeration in China. Machine learning algorithms are relatively new methods for addressing geographical problems. Clustering method, as unsupervised learning, is useful for classifying geographical units without the need for priori knowledge. Using data from 156 counties in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration, this study applied four clustering algorithms: the K-means, density-based spatial clustering of applications with noise (DBSCAN), Chameleon, and self-organizing map (SOM) methods, for classifying counties and districts in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration from the perspectives of economic centrality, traffic centrality, information centrality, and population centrality. GDP of the counties in 2014 was used to represent economic centrality; density of road networks in counties and attraction factor, calculated by the unsold train tickets in different time periods of the year, represent traffic centrality; Sina Weibo check-in data were used to represent information centrality; and county/district population represents population centrality. The result classifies the urban agglomeration into several levels. Respectively, K-means algorithm classifies counties into five levels; DBSCAN algorithm classifies counties into six levels; Chameleon algorithm classifies counties into six levels; and SOM algorithm classifies counties into five levels. SOM is the most applicable algorithm for the division of the urban agglomeration because the structure of counties is stable. This study further analyzed the spatial structure of the urban agglomeration with the central place theory, which points out that an agglomeration should contain certain number of counties in every level. The result of the SOM algorithm matches the central place theory. This research shows that there were remarkable gaps between different levels of the urban agglomeration. The central area of Beijing, as the core of the region, has strong radiation effect on the surrounding areas, but its functions are shared by the nearby counties. Moreover, the second and third level central cities distribute evenly and play an important role in regional development.
With the rapid development of urban economy and the promotion of urbanization, great changes have taken place in the spatial pattern of population migration in China. Migration has played an important role in the economic, social, and cultural development of cities. Based on the provincial population migration matrix data of 31 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities in 1985-2015, a social network analysis was conducted to investigate the overall characteristics of interprovincial population migration network and the role of each node. The results show that: (1) Network density of interprovincial population migration has experienced a slow decline in 1985-2000 and a continuous increase in 2000-2015. The concentrated migration of population from the northwest, southwest, and central regions to the eastern developed areas has become the mainstream of development. (2) The inward center potential of population migration network rapidly increased in 1985-2005 and gradually declined in 2005-2015. It indicates that the number of important population moving areas were increasing gradually (such as Tianjin and Fujian), towards a "multi-polarization" development. The outward center potential was always at a low level and exhibited a trend of fluctuation. The inward center potential was clearly larger than the outward center potential. It indicates that the population migration area is relatively concentrated, and the population emigration area is relatively dispersed. (3) The interprovincial population migration network can be divided into 5 groups: Northeast-North China population linkage area, Central Plains-Yangtze River Delta population linkage area, Middle South-Pearl River Delta population linkage area, southwest population linkage area, and northwest population linkage area. Among them, the Central Plains-Yangtze River Delta population linkage area was the most closely linked between and within group; Middle South-Pearl River Delta population linkage area had the highest total population migration. The Northeast-North China population linkage area had a stronger internal connection and only strongly linked with the northwest region externally. (4) According to the population migration analysis, the 31 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities can be divided into three major categories: net population migration areas including eight provinces, autonomous regions, municipalities (Guangdong, Zhejiang, Beijing, Jiangsu, Shanghai, Tianjin, Fujian, and Xinjiang); population balanced areas including six provinces and autonomous regions (Hainan, Inner Mongolia, Tibet, Qinghai, Ningxia, and Liaoning), and population net emigration areas including 17 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities including Sichuan, Henan, and so on. (5) Based on the centrality analysis and the core-periphery structure, contributions of the provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities to population migration was very different. In the interprovincial population migration network, a few core nodes had strong control over the total amount and path of population migration. About 25-30% core provinces controlled 70-80% of the population migration and path of the country, and the control power continued to rise. Among these provinces, Guangdong and Beijing had overall control significance. Jiangsu, Shaanxi, Sichuan, and Zhejiang were largely among the core control nodes. The role of Shanghai, Tianjin, Inner Mongolia, and Fujian as core areas had gradually increased. The role of Henan, Hubei, Hebei, and Xinjiang as core areas had declined. The overall migration path of the country is northward.
Reducing social vulnerability to floods is an important way to alleviate the social impact of flood disasters and to improve flood resilience. This article constructs an evaluation index system for social vulnerability to floods with regard to sensitivity, adaptability, and exposure based on a micro-scale analysis. Taking four riverside villages in Ankang City as an example, we adopted the integrated index weighted by entropy method to evaluate rural households' social vulnerability to floods. Then we clarify the importance of the relationship between evaluation index and social vulnerability by BP neural network method, and identify the major influencing factors of flood vulnerability. Accordingly, countermeasures and suggestions are put forward as a practical basis for reducing the rural households' social vulnerability to floods. The main results of this research are as follows. (1) Half of the households (715) in the case study villages showed a high level of social vulnerability. (2) The difference in social vulnerability is mainly a result of eight factors, including health status of the respondents, information channel on flood prevention, evacuation method, building quality, sick or disabled person in a household, household income diversification, proportion of children under the age of 5, and proportion of older people over 60 years of age. (3) Social vulnerability evaluation based on the perspective of rural households can accurately identify vulnerable farmers and analyze the influencing factors, which have more realistic significance for reducing the social vulnerability to floods of rural households.
With the development of tourism, host-guest relationship at tourism destinations is increasingly diverse and complex. Existing studies on host-guest relationship have paid much attention on local residents. But few studies have explored the mutual influencing mechanism among tourist motivation, contact intention, and tourists' experience quality, especially from the perspective of tourists. This study employed an on-site survey in Mount Sanqingshan National Park to build the tourist perspective motivation-contact intention-experience quality (MCE) model. We also applied the invariance measurement with the multi-group structural equation model. The result shows that tourist motivations at the sightseeing destination can be classified into four categories: experiencing life motivation, excitement/adventure motivation, relaxation/escape motivation, and socializing/knowledge motivation. Tourists' contact intention can be divided into two dimensions: moderate contact intention and close contact intention. The modeling result indicates that tourist motivations of experiencing life, relaxation/escape and socializing/knowledge have direct effect on moderate contact intention, and tourist motivations of excitement/adventure, relaxation/escape, and socializing/knowledge have direct effect on close contact intention. Close contact intention has a greater influence on tourists' experience quality than moderate contact intention. We also divided the samples into gender groups for invariance measurement with the multi-group structural equation model. We found that the model built in this study showed stability across samples.
With accelerating urbanization, population growth, and urban expansion, modern urban stormwater management faces new challenges. Based on the scenario analysis method, this study analyzed the cost-effectiveness of China's urban low impact development (LID) technical facilities. We calculated the benefits of different facilities under 80% and 95% rainfall event control rate scenarios respectively in the 30-year service period. The results show that the cost of construction and maintenance in the northern cities are higher than those in the southern cities. Benefits of stormwater management in the southern cities are generally higher than those in the northern cities. In addition, within the northern cities, benefits of urban stormwater management are lower in Beijing, Tianjin, and northwest regions. For different facilities, the cost of stormwater management for in situ infiltration is between 6 and 188 yuan/m3, significantly higher than the technical facilities with confluence function. Due to their low cost and reasonable effectiveness, combined sunken green area and rainwater wetland are suggested for northern cities with low precipitation. In the southern cities with more rainfall and strong rainfall intensity, it is recommended to use biological retention facilities in combination with regulating ponds. These methods not only can increase the storage capacity to meet the requirements of rainfall control rate but also can increase the rainwater infiltration and help purifying rainwater on the ground.
Paleoflood reconstruction is one of the foci of global change research and in the last decades, increasingly more attention has been paid to investigate lacustrine sediments to identify sedimentary proxies (such as chemical, physical) and extract environmental information of flood events. This article attempts to elucidate the issue based on recent Huangmaotan lacustrine sediments and reconstructs the regional paleoflood records of northern Jiangxi since the Little Ice Age. This investigation, using the 137Cs and 210Pb-based chronology, first presents a comparative analysis of grain size parameters, geochemical indices of sediments, and annual number of days with rainfall >50 mm during the last 60 years. It indicates that the particle size parameters, including (coarse silt+sand)/clay ratios, mean grain size (um), and ratios of Zr/Rb, Zr/Fe, and Ti/Rb correlated well with 11 of the 13 flood events recorded in historical documents during 1950-2010, which suggests that these indices can be applied to identify flood events from lacustrine sediments. Based on these indices, 23 of the 31 flood events during 1769-1950 recorded in historical documents are identified. The study indicates that: (1) Zr/Rb, Zr/Fe, and Ti/Rb ratios, (coarse silt + sand)/clay ratio, and mean grain size are sensitive to flood-event deposits, especially Zr/Rb ratios. Strong catchment erosion during flooding periods and intensified river discharge, we argue, are favorable conditions for the delivery of more coarse particles to the lake to deposit. This type of horizons, with high Zr and Ti, and low Fe and Rb, contrast with background lacustrine sediments. (2) This study also demonstrates that there were more floods occurred during the recent warm period (1900-2010) compared with the last cold stage of the Little Ice Age (1800-1900). (3) On multi-decadal time scales, regional floods were high-frequency incidence in the 1820s-1840s and the 1860s-1870s, when the East-Asian summer monsoon was stronger and rainfall was above normal in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River catchment, and in two warm phases (the 1920s-1940s and the 1980s-1990s), consistent with the characteristics of heavy floods in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River during the 20th century. The study provides a scientific basis for reconstructing paleoflood change by lacustrine sediments, and extends the time series of flood events by lake sediments.
Cross-border and domestic mergers and acquisitions (M&As) have undergone a rapid growth in recent years, which has facilitated the mobility of various elements across different regions and sectors. Therefore M&As are considered an important impetus and solution for the optimization of enterprise organization, industrial transformation, and spatial restructuring, as well as regional integration and sustainable development. Since the 1950s, there has been a vast literature straddling the boundaries of economics, enterprise managerialics, international trade studies, and economic geography on M&As. The literature mainly focused on three perspectives, namely organizational perception, interaction or networks perspective, and a contextual or spatial view of the firms involved in M&As. Taking advantage of theories and methodologies in relevant research fields, such as location theory, corporate geography, industrial agglomeration, and global production networks and proximity, scholars have done much effective empirical work on this issue. First, the spatiotemporal pattern and contacting networks of M&As have been investigated in various spatial scales, such as worldwide, inter-countries, and inter- and intra-regions. Second, deriving related theories, the literature focused on the driving factors and dynamic mechanism of M&As, especially the heterogeneities of enterprise characteristics, industrial attributes, and locational context. Third, the literature has paid increasing attention to the locational implications of M&As for corporate performance, public welfare, industrial transformation, and regional development, and the spatial consequences of M&As is a hotspot for related studies. Although cross-border and domestic M&As taken by Chinese corporates are increasingly frequent since the global financial crisis, research on M&As from spatial and geographical perspectives in China is far from sufficient. Therefore, this literature review focuses on the progress in theoretical perspectives and empirical research on M&As, and explores the implications and agendas for further research on M&As in a transitional China.
Regional resilience has become a trendy research branch. However, traditional Chinese research of resilience had been limited within the equilibrium-based epistemology. This article, based on a review of international literature, clarifies different definitions of economic resilience: engineering resilience, ecological resilience, and evolutionary resilience. The article rejects equilibrium-based epistemology of resilience and argues instead the evolutionary perspective. Then, it introduces the formation mechanism of economic resilience from macro and micro aspects; and introduces quantitative measurement of network analysis. This article concludes that resilience should be extended to the economic field and evolutionary-based perspective. Chinese researchers should notice connections between three research branches — namely evolutionary economic geography, innovation geography, and regional resilience. Future research should focus on case studies of urban and regional economies. They should also explore the existing open patent data source to establish the quantitative database of industry space.
